Monthly Archives: June 2012

06.27.12
by

The UltraMindSolution–It’s About What You Eat–Mark Hyman M.D.

Everywhere you look, the discourse is about the nation becoming anxious, depressed and FAT!   New York Times  columnist Mark Bittman has this recent report. ( June 27, 2012 Op-Ed) 

“One of the challenges of arguing that hyperprocessed carbohydrates are largely responsible for the obesity pandemic (“epidemic” is no longer a strong enough word, say many experts) is the notion that “a calorie is a calorie.”

Accept that, and you buy into the contention that consuming 100 calories’ worth of sugar-water (like Coke or Gatorade), white bread or French fries is the same as eating 100 calories of broccoli or beans. And Big Food — which has little interest in selling broccoli or beans — would have you believe that if you expend enough energy to work off those 100 calories, it simply doesn’t matter.

There’s an increasing body of evidence, however, that calories from highly processed carbohydrates like white flour (and of course sugar) provide calories that the body treats differently, spiking both blood sugar and insulin and causing us to retain fat instead of burning it off.

In other words, all calories are not alike.”

FromGordon’s Good Reads:

There is much more to the story than calories  and obesity. If you wish to read an outstanding overview and “work book”  on how eating the wrong foods in almost any combination can raise havoc with your life, your brain and your body, get a copy of Mark Hyman M.D.’s book The UltraMindSolution.  The book is  about “functional medicine,”  treating the root cause of illnesses and disorders rather than just the symptoms.

Dr. Hyman details how eating the wrong foods combined with food allergies can have health implications far beyond the obesity epidemic including autism, cancer, diabetes,  and the short circuiting of the brain!  Hyman cites many culprits including sugar, highly processed foods, yeast, gluten and mercury.  Conversely, he concludes and documents that eliminating toxic elements from the diet can  erase not only the symptoms but the disease itself!  The Ultra Mind Solution concludes that by fixing the body first by carefully examining what people ingest, individuals  can also fix their brains and free themselves from anxiety and depression.

This is a self-help book of the finest order. Whether you adopt Hyman’s philosophy is an open question but I predict that after reading the UltraMindSolution you will change your diet and carefully consider almost everything you eat. You may even adopt the program!  Proponents of Mayor Bloomberg’s  ban on super size sugar drinks should place this volume in their arsenal!

Also by Mark Hyman, M.D. : The Detox Box, Ultraprevention, UltraMetabolism,  The UltraSimple Diet, The UltraMetabolism Cook-Book.

06.27.12
by

EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE-ANOTHER GREAT VICTORY FOR JEAN EDWARD SMITH!

The passage of time is the greatest gift to the biographer possessing the brilliance  and patience to seize upon that window to bring to readers a modern-day perspective of iconic historical figures and events. 

Jean Edward Smith has accomplished in EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE, exactly what he offered his readers in his remarkable works Grant and FDR. Historian and biographer Jean Edward Smith is rightfully in the company of  historians Robert Caro, Edmund Morris, David McCullough and Max Hastings.  EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE, places Eisenhower in  an objective perspective within his military career, the presidency and his personal life.  Don’t look for an in-depth history of D-Day.  While there is plenty of  detail of  the European Theater in WW II, this book steps back to place the  enormity of the impact of Eisenhower’s  approach to leadership  in a sweeping overview of the war in Europe .

Smith takes a similar approach to the eight years of Eisenhower’s presidency and the manner in which he organized and staffed the White House, dealt with both political supporters and opponents and world affairs.  There is vivid detail on decisions, relevant today, (The building of the Interstate Highway System as a stimulus to help reverse a post Korean War recession), school desegregation in Little Rock, Vietnam, Formosa, China and the Cold War. 

Readers of EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE will be left with no doubt about Ike’s  intimate relationship with Kay Summersby and the impact on his marriage to Mamie. Smith writes this narrative in a most factual manner and details the openness with which Eisenhower and Summersby were together publicly and privately throughout the war. Smith also details Eisenhower’s  changing relationship with his wife Mamie over the course of four decades.

The book clearly reveals that Eisenhower’s brilliance as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces was in his political dexterity in contrast to his grasp of battlefield strategy. With the exception of marginal success ( that may be a generous assessment) in the North Africa Campaign, Eisenhower had no battlefield command experience prior to D-Day!  However, his ability to bring discordant bigger than life individuals together and promote cooperation ( Churchill, FDR, Montgomery, Patton,  Bradley, de Gaulle)  was exactly why FDR chose Eisenhower over Marshall to lead the European Campaign.

I have previously read considerably about Eisenhower, but just as in Smith’s  biography Grant, I now have a  view through a twenty-first-century lens of the two famous generals who became two-term presidents.  Many popular conceptions and mis-conceptions are clarified.  Smith peels away the Eisenhower myths and reveals his brilliant mind and the thought processes by which as a leader, not a battlefield commander, Eisenhower established his legacy.

Some interesting insight from EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE:

Ike was not the first president to embrace golf.  Actually Woodrow Wilson secretly played more rounds during his president than Eisenhower!  However, Eisenhower made no secret of his love of golf and is credited with the explosion of the national popularity of the game.

In his first term in office, Eisenhower increased the budget of the National Institute of Health ten-fold.

Eisenhower may have prevented World War III by forcing Britain and France to withdraw from its invasion of Egypt over the closing of the Suez Canal.

A coalition of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the passage of most of Eisenhower’s domestic programs.  Ike was considered “too liberal ”  by the old guard right-wing of the Republican Party.

It was Eisenhower who  carried out Harry Truman’s earlier attempts to desegregate all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.

At the end of the war Ike wrote in a letter to his boss General Marshall that he planned to return to the U.S., divorce Mamie and marry Kay Summersby. Marshall in the strongest terms admonished him not to destroy his reputation and career! Eisenhower took the advice. Later, out of respect for Eisenhower and fearful that if the letter became public it would become a campaign issue in 1952,  President Truman, who was at that time at  political and personal odds with Ike, ordered the letter destroyed!

There is much, much more! Look for many literary honors for EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE